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Friday, November 8, 2013

A new Wegmans opened near-ish to us a few weeks ago, and it's a grocery store. I know. But I have great love for Wegmans. I generally think moving to Maryland was one of the best decisions we've ever made, a happy marriage of persons and place being well-suited to each other, but one of the great demerits of that decision was the severe downgrade of our grocery shopping experience.

Now our county is engaged in some massive controlled-growth planning. We grow too much; we must control it. In principle I mostly agree with the concepts of the master plan, one whose primary goals include preserving green space and limiting traffic congestion. They've issued a moratorium on new commercial spaces beyond a certain square footage measurement. This comes at a terrible time in Wegmans' attempted infiltration of the Maryland grocery market, and although several of these fine establishments have opened in our state in the past few years, the nearest one seems to be able to get to me is about 25 minutes.

The newest one, while still not that close to our house, is only about 10 minutes past the house where L had a morning playdate when school was closed on Tuesday. And E loves eating pizza in the Wegmans cafe. So I proposed to her a grocery store lunch (before we picked up her sister and went to the car wash) just because I wanted to get in that new grocery store. You understand, right, my need for a Wegmans justification? I just needed some quality Wegmans time.

We ate and then we wandered the aisles, making friends with a produce lady who sliced open a kind of mango we'd never seen before so we could taste it (ataulfo - and yummm.).

Then E asked about the big, hairy balls, and, well, that got my attention. So we bought a couple to try at home.

They're called rambutan and while I'd seen them before, I'd never tasted them. The flavor was sweet, but the texture was a little slimy. E wasn't impressed but even so, they were worth buying for the experiment and her willingness to try a new food. Good ol' Wegmans, see?

She kept miscalling them rumbatumba and I let her, because it was way better than big, hairy balls.

There are just some things you don't want your seven-year-old repeating out of the house.__________ PS: completely unrelated, do you like that dish? E made it at a fused glass studio when she was in the middle of a really tough week at the beginning of summer. I took her there before dinner on a night when she needed some undivided attention, and every time I see that dish I smile. It's a touchstone on her metaphorical growth chart.